Danger in La La Land

Do you ever dream in color?

When I was little, the question itself shocked me. Who doesn't dream in color? I assumed everyone did. Probably most of you do, at least on occasion.

Nowadays, the part that shocks me is when people say they don't dream or that they can't remember their dreams. That must be incredibly refreshing! I would love to wake up and immediately be able to focus on the new day.

Instead, my morning usually begins this way:

My eyes shoot open and I struggle to loosen my grip on my pillow. I'm shaking and I have hiccups. I have to sit there and sort through all the scenes being replayed in my head, making sure that none of them were real. Sometimes I'm crying, sometimes I am struggling to breathe. Adrenaline is shooting in painful bursts through my body.

And this may be the third or fourth time I've had this experience in the last eight hours.

Having such intense nightmares is, to a certain degree, fascinating to me because I can think of no reason it should be happening. I had a marvelous childhood full of fun and love; I have a wonderful adulthood still full of fun and love. I don't watch scary movies and try not to dwell on negative things. I avoid violent imagery and don't eat big meals before bed. Nevertheless, I continue to dream new and often horrible things.

Over time, one of the methods I learned to calm myself down after these episodes is to attempt to remember the whole dream--the chronology, if not the goriest details--and write them down. As I record the dream, I talk myself through it and try to figure out which parts were the most frightening and why. It is often during this process when I can start to distance myself from the fear I felt in the dream and begin to see some of the aspects of the dream as interesting or humorous. By the time I've written down as much as I can remember, I'm usually in a much better frame of mind and ready to officially begin my day. 

I have over a decade's worth of notebooks and journals filled with my epically bizarre and vivid dreams and nightmares. Now I'm inviting you into this world I've apparently invented but am unable to control. Welcome to Danger in La-La Land.